I’ve been traveling the world and working remotely since 2016, back when the Chinese term for “digital nomad” didn’t even exist yet. So I can tell you this with full confidence:
Digital nomadism is something you stumble into, not something you can chase. Don’t treat it as a lifestyle goal.
You need a skill. You have to keep digging into your field until you’re an expert, until you can work however you like, until what you deliver remotely is every bit as good as what you’d deliver onsite, until people trust your expertise no matter where in the world you happen to be.
Reach that level and working from anywhere stops being a problem — and only then does being a digital nomad become a nice side option worth considering.
Looking back, have you noticed that the people online who hype and sell digital nomadism aren’t selling their own professional expertise? They’re just teaching you “how to be a digital nomad.”
That’s the strangest part of it all: digital nomads making money by teaching other people how to be digital nomads.
(Postscript: this thread resurfaced at the end of Three Moves Between Claude and Codex — following the tokens the way herders follow water and grass. I really am a digital nomad after all.)